VIDEO: Giving Thanks: Precita Eyes Makes the Mission Beautiful

The Mission wasn’t always so colorful. The murals that decorate Mission buildings–and bring tourists to the neighborhood to experience them–weren’t always so ubiquitous. In the 1970’s murals began popping up, starting a trend that would help define the neighborhood art scene.

One of the pioneers of that trend is Susan Kelk Cervantes. “I think I did my first mural in the Mission in 1965,” she said. “No one even knew what a mural was.”

A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Kelk Cervantes was already involved in the local community art scene when the owners of a coffee shop on Valencia asked her to paint her first mural. After realizing she wasn’t enthusiastic about gallery culture in San Francisco, Kelk Cervantes decided murals were the way to go. “I just thought wow, painting directly on the wall, with people, for people and by people seemed like a really wonderful direction to go.”

Kelk Cervantes’ love for mural art grew and she and her husband Luis created Precita Eyes, an organization dedicated to bringing artists and communities together through murals.